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Google Is Eating Our Mail

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Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#221

Post by JeremyBanks »

vbezhenar wrote: post #164
Tepix wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right response to this problem - for gmail users - would be to switch to a different email provider. After all, if you are not receiving important mails because Google decides to block them for inexplicable reasons, you are getting an inferior, faulty service. (For me gmail is inferior regardless as my privacy is violated)

Can you suggest free email provider with similar level of service which allows to use your own domain?

Does Google allow you to use your own domain for free?

They removed the free GSuite tier a long time ago, and they've obscured some the options you could use to configure a similar setup in gmail. I'm not sure if it's still possible.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#222

Post by specialist »

Thank you for sharing your experiences, insights.

#1 - Does anyone send test emails and measure delivery rates? As in send yourself a bunch of emails and see what happens.

USPS and its major customers and vendors do this with physical mail. They measure stuff like UAA (undeliverable as addressed). FWIW, their Inspector General estimates 4.3% of mail was UAA in 2013. Report Number: MS-AR-14-006 https://www.uspsoig.gov/document/undeliverable-addressed-mai...

#2 - What is the responsibility, liability for email relays to treat everyone equally? For comparison, a US retailer has to accept US currency, but can (sometimes) turn away problematic clients. Is there anything like that for electronic exchanges, transactions?

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#223

Post by swiley »

jacobolus wrote: post #218
prlambert wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the PMs for Gmail and hang around HN quite a bit. This is my personal take, not an official reply. It's simply not true we have no incentive to fix this. Here are a few: Firstly, Gmail's success is entirely predicated on the health of the global email ecosystem. Gmail does not, inherently, have any network effects (unlike FB, messengers, any other comms tool of Gmail's scale). Email itself, of course has a…

> I'm one of the PMs for Gmail and hang around HN quite a bit. Can you bring back the old web UI? I experience obnoxious interaction and interface bugs in the new one on an hourly basis, it has horrendous interaction latency for many operations that used to be snappy, it looks worse, and has basically nothing new I want. Actually, can you bring back the Gmail of like 10 years ago? Basically every change since then ha…

If you install noscript and log in the old UI comes back and it's amazing! I've actually stopped using mutt on my laptop for gmail because of it.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#224

Post by chrismeller »

_jal wrote: post #203
chrismeller wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that you bring up AOL, because I remember dealing with this kind of crap with them. It was annoying, but didn't feel like it was as big of a deal. I guess the only real difference is that with AOL it was less insidious... You knew it was only for aol.com emails and that you weren't dealing with business info. Not that emails to personal addresses aren't important, but at least it wasn't suddenly Some…

AOL had a highly competent mail administration outfit, at least compared to other big shops at the time. It could be annoying to deal with them at times, but they had fair, mostly sane processes and I could always get in touch with a technical person with authority there. (They may still be this good, I just haven't had reason to deal with them for quite a while.) Google - well, I haven't had to, but can get in touch…

Didn’t AT&T outsource all their email to Yahoo! a decade or so ago?

Not sure I agree about being able to reach a tech person at Google, even informally. Bitching on Twitter can get some results, but that’s hardly the way to operate a business...

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#225

Post by erikbye »

vbezhenar wrote: post #164
Tepix wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right response to this problem - for gmail users - would be to switch to a different email provider. After all, if you are not receiving important mails because Google decides to block them for inexplicable reasons, you are getting an inferior, faulty service. (For me gmail is inferior regardless as my privacy is violated)

Can you suggest free email provider with similar level of service which allows to use your own domain?

Why free? Do you not pay for your internet connection? Water/electricity?

A good email service is one worth paying for.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#226

Post by chrismeller »

hitpointdrew wrote: post #172
chrismeller wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that you bring up AOL, because I remember dealing with this kind of crap with them. It was annoying, but didn't feel like it was as big of a deal. I guess the only real difference is that with AOL it was less insidious... You knew it was only for aol.com emails and that you weren't dealing with business info. Not that emails to personal addresses aren't important, but at least it wasn't suddenly Some…

>It was annoying, but didn't feel like it was as big of a deal. Perhaps because email itself wasn't as big of deal back then? Phone calls and snail mail were used with a lot more regularity back then.

Heh. I’ll be honest, that sounds a lot like a millennial projecting onto all the old people in this thread.

Sure there’s an element of truth to it, but email was insanely popular before the iPhone too...

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#229

Post by _jal »

chrismeller wrote: post #224
_jal wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AOL had a highly competent mail administration outfit, at least compared to other big shops at the time. It could be annoying to deal with them at times, but they had fair, mostly sane processes and I could always get in touch with a technical person with authority there. (They may still be this good, I just haven't had reason to deal with them for quite a while.) Google - well, I haven't had to, but can get in touch…

Didn’t AT&T outsource all their email to Yahoo! a decade or so ago? Not sure I agree about being able to reach a tech person at Google, even informally. Bitching on Twitter can get some results, but that’s hardly the way to operate a business...

Didn't mean to imply that Google's stance is a good thing.

It absolutely should not be the case that you need a pal in the right department to get something done, but that seems to be where we are - our Politburos are just privatized.

Edit - My mail issue specifically is with WorldNet. I believe that's run by an ATT spinoff call "Maillennium", but maybe that changed. I don't especially care from a practical perspective; there is exactly one person whom this affects and we worked around it forever ago. I just see it as a barometer of ATT's interest in being a competent network operator.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#230

Post by badsectoracula »

Chlorus wrote: post #179
bhauer wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it is a poor service, you can (and should) fault people for using it. Agreed. There should be some give and take, some minor reputation at stake. It's healthy to have some people applying back-pressure against popularity. I like the idea that laypeople might hear whispers among their tech-savvy friends that it's not considered "cool" to have a gmail address. Much like having an aol.com email address was seen as…

> I like the idea that laypeople might hear whispers among their tech-savvy friends that it's not considered "cool" to have a gmail address I haven't laughed this hard in a while. How'd that go with convincing people not to join walled gardens like Facebook and Insta?

With Facebook the average person doesn't really lose anything though, whereas with Gmail is like the mailman decides to drop some mail in the garbage every now and then (and it is on you to also check the garbage in addition to your mailbox in case the mailman decided to drop some mail in there too).
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